Darrell Ehrlick has been named editor of The Billings Gazette. He starts Sept. 30.
The new editor of The Billings Gazette is Darrell Ehrlick, a Billings native who now is editor of the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming.
Mike Gulledge, vice president of sales and marketing for Lee Enterprises and publisher of The Billings Gazette Communications, announced the choice Monday.
“I am thrilled Darrell will be joining us. He has a terrific track record of success in Lee as an editor and journalist,” Gulledge said. “I was extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to select Darrell from a powerful list of finalists.”
Ehrlick will take over as editor of Montana’s largest newspaper on Sept. 30. He replaces Steve Prosinski, who was editor for 13 years and led The Gazette to being named the state’s best large daily newspaper six times by the Montana Newspaper Association.
Ehrlick has been editor in Casper since December 2011.
“I’ve been privileged to be a journalist in some other great communities, but the opportunity to come back where you were born and raised and where you still have family was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up,” Ehrlick said.
The Gazette is a voice not just for Billings but also the whole state of Montana, he said. He wants to build on that strength while reaching new digital readers.
“I’m greedy, and I want all the audience we can have,” Ehrlick said. “How do we reach them on new devices, whether that’s social media or a tablet or a phone or whatever is on the next horizon?”
During his tenure with Lee, Ehrlick’s newspapers have won three Lee President’s Awards, including an award for spirit in 2010. In Minnesota, he was given the “Friend of Minnesota Newspapers” award for his work on open meetings and public records.
After graduating from Billings Senior High in 1994, Ehrlick earned a bachelor’s degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., and then studied divinity and literary journalism at graduate school at Emory University and Bennington College.
He wrote a Minnesota history book, “It Happened in Minnesota,” and edited “In God’s Lap,” a history book about Cache County, Utah.
Lee Enterprises, based in Davenport, Iowa, owns 46 daily newspapers, with a joint interest in four others, and publishes about 300 specialty publications in 23 states.
In Montana, Lee owns The Billings Gazette, the Montana Standard in Butte, the Independent Record in Helena, the Missoulian and the Ravalli Republic.
